This uneven trilogy of sex comedies was based on the real life exploits of one Xaviera Hollander, a Dutch immigrant who supposedly worked her way up the prostitution ladder and wound up writing a very popular book.

The Happy Hooker:

Xaviera Hollander (Lynn Redgrave) is a pretty young woman from the Netherlands who moves to New York City to marry an American man she fell head over heels in love with. She met him in Holland where he was quite the charmer but now that she's relocated to his stomping grounds, things take a turn for the worse and she realizes he's actually a jerk and that his domineering mother controls his every move.

Xaviera decides to head out on her own and she takes a job in an embassy for a while but soon finds she's not cut out for that kind of work. She heads out onto the streets of New York on her own and decides to turn tricks for cash. This goes fine until a crooked cop robs her of all her money, at which point she decides that she might be better off plying her trade in a house of ill repute rather than alone on the streets. As she begins her new life in the bordello, she finds she has a real knack for this type of work and before you know it, our horny heroine is running the joint. Unfortunately for her, that cop who robber her awhile back has a memory like an elephant...

While Lynn Redgrave is perfectly adorable in an 'all business' sort of way, the film provides few moments of genuine titillation and is more of a character study than a sex comedy. There are some interesting moments in the picture and Anita Morris as one of Xaviera's employees certainly looks good when her time to shine front of the camera arrives but for the most part this first film is actually fairly uninteresting. It's not at all paced well and while it's interesting to see Redgrave play this part and to see the one and only Richard Lynch play the cop, things lean towards the dull side too often for the picture's own good.

Director Nicholas Sgarro has, since this film was finished, worked primarily in television on shows like Starsky & Hutch and Fame though before he directed The Happy Hooker he was a fairly respected script supervisor on films like The Exorcist and The French Connection. The film was based on the novel of the same name by the real life Xaviera Hollander

The Happy Hooker Goes To Washington:

The second film in the trilogy finds Joey Heatherton (of Cry-Baby and Bluebeard) in the role of Xaviera. When the film begins she's moved from New York City to the sunny confines of Hollywood where she makes her living running a new bordello while penning a love life advice column on the side.

When a political scandal erupts in which she is a key player, she's called on to testify in front of the senate where she's being, unbeknownst to her, setup by some guilty senators to take the public eye off of the real culprits behind the dirty deeds that the tabloids have exploited. Xaviera shows up and confidently tells her side of the story, winning over the jury and painting the senators in question in a very shady light indeed. While all of this is going on, Xaviera makes friendships with a federal agent and gets to know an Arabian oil mogul in a very personal manner.

While the first film was a biographical piece as much as it was a sex comedy, this second shot at telling Xaviera's story is considerably trashier. The nudity quotient is upped substantially and the film is played more for laughs and cheap thrills than for anything else. The movie is very much a product of the late seventies, and as such it's pretty dated but those same qualities that date the movie also make it a fair amount of goofy fun. Look for the one and only George Hamilton as one of the senators. Director William A. Levey is better known in cult movie circles as the genius behind Wham, Bam Thank You Spaceman!, Blackenstein and Skatepark USA and he also went on to write Night Patrol.

The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood:

The third and final film in the series was produced by none other than Menaham Golan and Yoram Globus, better known to children of the eighties as the two men who run Cannon Films!

This time around, Xaviera is played by Martine Beswick of Cyclone and From A Whisper To A Scream. The last film actually tells the origins of the character as we see how Xaviera became a writer and subsequently, once her book was published and became a hit, how it was chased by a film producer named Warkoff (Phil Silvers). When the deal falls apart, Warkoff's own grandson snags the title and talks Xaviera into letting him do the picture as an independent.

Because the film doesn't have the financial backing that a major studio could provide, Xaviera decides to raise some money on her own by doing what she does best and before you know it she's got her girls working over time to raise the cash. While this is going on, her relationship with Lionel Lamely (Adam West of TV's Batman) begins to get very sour...

Even goofier than the second film in the series, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood throws sense out the window and is almost slapstick in spots. It's played completely for laughs with almost the entire cast hamming it up for the camera. The script provides ample opportunity for 'wink wink nudge nudge' sex jokes and the pacing is handled in such a way that the gags, as corny as they are, come quickly.

Video:

Each of the three movies in this collection looks fine in its original aspect ratio of 1.85.1. The first film is, sadly, non-anamorphic but the two sequels have anamorphic transfers. Grain is noticeable throughout each of the three pictures but aside from that things are fine even if you'll probably notice the odd speck of print damage here and there. Flesh tones look pretty natural and detail levels, while far from mind blowing, are fine considering these are older, low budget films. There aren't any problems with edge enhancement or mpeg compression artifacts and shimmering and aliasing, while present, is kept to a minimum.